Three Red Lights
by VickyVicarious
Summary: Phoenix Wright has known Dahlia for all of two minutes and he's madly in love... but a weirdly intense guy in a glowing red mask seems to disapprove. [a time-travel fix-it]


**Prompt:** A character falling HOPELESSLY in love with a character s/he just met and when s/he FINALLY had the courage to come and greet them, someone JUST have to hold his/er shoulder and said "don't do that! S/he is taken" then something unexpected happened.

This started out as just a silly crackfill but then started taking itself seriously on me.

* * *

"She's perfect," whispered Phoenix Wright, aspiring defense attorney, as he watched the One True Love of His Life, AKA Dahlia Hawthorne, saunter out of the District Court basement library.

Mere seconds later, the lovestruck young lad realized that despite the gift of poem and bottle necklace, his darling Dollie (a nickname so far only tentatively used in his thoughts, but one Phoenix thought a perfect match to the 'Feenie' moniker she had almost immediately given him) had not supplied him with a phone number. Nor an email. Nor an address, or a telegram location, or a carrier pigeon, or any other method of contacting her ever again.

"Ohno-ohno-ohno," he gasped, in time with his frantic footsteps up the stairs after her: "Ohno-ohno-ohpleaseno-thiswasfate-ohDollie-Ican'tloseyounow-ohno-"

"Oh yes," purred a dark, smooth voice, as a strong hand snatched his shoulder and swung him up against the wall. The owner of the hand had apparently been lurking in the lobby waiting to catch him as he crested the stairs. "Yes, you can - and will - lose her now."

"Wh- what?" Phoenix gasped, lurching forward as he caught sight of Dahlia in front of him, hips wiggling as she strolled towards the glass front doors. His heart lurching, he tried to call out to her: "DAHllmmnph! RMNPH!"

His mysterious accoster grinned at him over the second hand covering Phoenix's mouth, bright white teeth in his tanned face looking distinctly predatory, an impression not helped by the wild shock of bright white hair emerging from beneath the - giant mask covering half his face with three glowing red lights beaming down at him like something out of a science fiction novel?!

"MMRPH?" Phoenix demanded.

"You see," the man(?) continued smugly, jerking his head back briefly to indicate Dahlia, growing ever more distant as she ducked her head coyly at some deliveryman holding the door for her, "she's taken."

"...dmnurph?" Phoenix echoed, sadly. He couldn't believe it. He'd really thought - and the poem, not to mention the necklace - and by this weirdo? Really? "fnee hur mrffrnd?"

"No, not by me," the man replied, seemingly having no difficulties translating Phoenix's muffled words. Also, seeming strangely disgusted by the prospect of Dahlia being his girlfriend, instead of wistfully honored by the mere implication, as any sane man would be. "By the law. Right now, actually."

Phoenix could only watch in mute horror as, across the room, a policeman caught Dahlia's arm just before she made it out the door. He hauled her back inside the building, and into handcuffs, mere moments later. Dahlia meekly submitted to this utter injustice (of course she'd be too scared to protest, oh poor Dollie, what had her crazy probably-ex boyfriend done?) and was paraded away as Phoenix was forced to helplessly watch.

"Now, in the original version, they couldn't hold her," the psychotic masked man continued, voice a mixture of bitter and smug as he leaned forward to whisper uncomfortably close to Phoenix's face, breath reeking of coffee: "But this is gonna tie that particular loose end up early."

And with a sharp yank, Phoenix's newly acquired necklace was suddenly dangling between the crazy man's fingers. His furious struggles were all but ignored as the guy shoved a shoulder against Phoenix's chest to continue to hold him fast to the wall, and Phoenix silently vowed to himself to spend more time in the gym.

The masked man was still monologuing.

"It's a real damn shame I can't go back any further and save myself, or make more than three trips, but - well, you make do with what you have," he mused. "And at least I'll save my kitten from having to directly face her. Add in a little interference with that damn Morgan's visit, and well, I think it will all work out quite nicely."

The glowing lights in the mask were suddenly focused directly on Phoenix, as their insane owner's grip abruptly tightened enough to really hurt. "...Given one thing," he growled.

"Look, I hate to rely on you of all people, Trite, I do, but I've got no other options, so listen up: on the night of September 5, 2016, you protect Mia Fey with your life. Don't leave her alone for a second, understand?"

The menace in the masked man's voice was frighteningly palpable - but so was a strange shake, one echoed in his bruising grip, one that Phoenix realized with a jolt he recognized: fear. No... not just fear, but pure desperate terror, for a loved one probably already long lost to you, but for whom you would take any miniscule chance you had to at least try and save.

Fear like he'd felt when he read that article about the Demon Attorney.

Shaken, Phoenix found himself nodding. Found himself mumbling garbled assurances that he would protect this Mia Fey, whoever she was, that he wouldn't fail, a steady string of nonsensical grunts as the masked man continued to clutch him tight against the wall and stare him down with three desperate, glowing eyes.

Then one of the eyes flickered, as if losing power. The man's head jerked back. He swore quietly, then hissed, "Damn thing lasts shorter than I thought. Remember, Trite, don't leave her al-"

In the middle of the word, the flickering light died, and the man vanished into thin air.

Phoenix gaped blankly at the empty space in front of him. With shaking fingers he felt around his neck - the necklace really was gone.

"What the hell," he said.

* * *

Phoenix followed the news.

Dahlia Hawthorne was found carrying the poison that had put one Diego Armando, defense attorney, into critical care. The timing of the ambulance arriving at the courthouse matched up almost exactly to the time Phoenix and Dahlia had first bumped into one another in the basement - allowing for the driving time, about ten minutes after the poisoning. When the papers came out with her name, a horrified pharmacology student came forward with the information that Dahlia Hawthorne was his girlfriend and those drugs had been stolen from him. Apparently, he in some way was intending this as an argument for her innocence. It rather backfired.

Dahlia's protests that a man wearing a mask with two glowing red lights on it had appeared out of nowhere and forcibly planted the damning evidence on her while the police officer's back was turned, before vanishing into thin air as the lights on his mask went from two to one, were likewise dismissed as ludicrous tall tales.

Phoenix... was not so certain, especially after seeing the photos of the poisoned man, and his strong resemblance to a certain masked man who had vanished into thin air at least once before. And who had been holding the evidence at the time.

Despite the doubts niggling at him, Phoenix still wanted to defend Dahlia in court, but he wasn't a lawyer yet... However, a cursory search revealed, one Mia Fey, so important to the mysterious masked version of Diego Armando, was.

The conversation when he went to her for help was... enlightening, to say the least. As was Dahlia's trial, which Mia attended with him and Miles Edgeworth of all people prosecuted, with a fury against the defendant that seemed almost personal.

"I might have been wrong about her," Phoenix said, staring down at the courtroom and feeling like that masked man had looked when he said 'September 5, 2016'. "But I'm not wrong about him, boss, I know it."

Mia looked at him quietly for a very long minute.

"All right," she finally said, softly. "I'll help you then."

* * *

Five years later, Morgan Fey broke her leg in a car accident after a man with a glowing red mask appeared out of nowhere in front of the bus she was riding and it drove off the road trying to avoid him. Or at least, that was what the driver swore up and down had happened - no one else could find any evidence of any masked man ever having been there.

Though not seriously injured, Morgan was put out of commission for several weeks. During that time, Dahlia Hawthorne was hung for her crimes.

* * *

On September 5, 2016, Phoenix refused to leave the office. Redd White's attempted attack failed when the young lawyer tackled him across the room, and Mia was able to take the corrupt man down as planned. Maya Fey became good friends with the man who had saved her big sister's life, and somehow unofficially his assistant as well.

With the three of them united, the Fey & Co. Law firm was a star on the rise in the legal world, defending the innocent and exposing the guilty...

...and eventually saving a prosecutor commonly thought of as nothing more than a demon.

* * *

One year later, Diego Armando woke to the smell of coffee, and the sound of Mia's voice telling him about her week as she had been doing once every seven days for seven years now.

'I can't believe it worked,' he didn't say.

'Guess I'll have to stop calling him Trite,' he didn't say.

'Mia,' he very nearly said but didn't, in the end.

Instead he said, "Is that blend #38 I smell?"

Mia gasped, and hugged him, and he didn't care at all that when he opened his eyes he couldn't see her smile. 

Not when he could feel it as she kissed him.


End file.
